The Pragmatics of Conflict: Deconstructing the "Self" and "Other" in Indian and Pakistani Diplomatic Rhetoric (May 2025–Present)

Abstract

This study examines how India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) linguistically constructed competing versions of legitimacy, morality, and blame during the 2025–2026 crisis triggered by the Pahalgam attack, Operation Sindoor, and the Indus Waters Treaty abeyance. Adopting an interpretivist, social constructionist paradigm, the study triangulates three frameworks: van Dijk's Ideological Square, Halliday and Matthiessen's transitivity system, and Chilton's Discourse Space Theory, to examine Self/Other polarization, clause-level agency, and spatial-temporal-axiological deixis. The accessible population comprised approximately 120 official MEA and MOFA texts (60 each) issued between May 2025 and mid-2026, from which a purposive, criterion-based sample of 40 texts (20 MEA, 20 MOFA) was selected. Data were collected through documentary and archival retrieval from official ministry websites and press archives, and analyzed using qualitative, corpus-informed Critical Discourse Analysis across three integrated coding stages. Findings reveal that both ministries deploy structurally identical, inverted Ideological Square strategies; selectively passivize agency around treaty-related rather than security-related content; and securitize the Indus Waters Treaty through convergent axiological framing despite divergent temporal positioning. The three analytical layers converge specifically around resource-related discourse, demonstrating that shared natural resources receive distinct, more cautious rhetorical treatment within nuclear-armed crisis diplomacy.